Performance Anxiety
by eswigag
Summary: "Those moments would be the only ones Dean treasured from his time with Alastair." Mentioned past Anna/Dean het. Set S4, during "On the Head of a Pin." Mind the warnings at the top!


**Warnings for:** language, torture, blood, gore, PTSD, and references to implied rape/rape threats.

* * *

"You're hardly doing anything with those knives, Dean," Alastair observed.

Dean wished he would just stop talking. He would love to be the one who made him shut up. He kept fantasizing about ripping out his tongue and hacking away his throat and bashing his rotten fucking brains out as the demon screamed. And oh, you bet there would be screaming. Screaming and begging the last things Dean would hear from his old pal Alastair before putting a permanent silence to the voice of his nightmares.

Those moments would be the only ones Dean treasured from his time with Alastair.

He would've done it already if it wasn't information they needed. Information Alastair still hadn't spat out. _He will,_ Dean promised himself, _I'll_ make _him tell._

 _Big words for a guy who can't even make him scream._

The rattle of chains nearly stopped Dean's heart. Bad memories. Bad fucking memories. He refused to turn around and have to look at him again. _He's just moving around. If he got out, you'd already be dead. Jesus Christ, stop being such a pussy._

"They're there for a reason," Alastair continued, still fucking calm and condescending as shit, still talking to Dean the same way he always did, that mocking, lecturing fucking tone. "You know how to use 'em. I've seen your work, Dean, and no need to be shy - it's very _good_ work. But now, you just keep... cutting and stepping back. You haven't even _touched_ bone. I taught you better than that. I mean, I know that this place isn't giving you as much to work with as Hell, but come on, Dean, you're not going to get anywhere with half-assed crap like this!"

Dean wouldn't answer. He didn't trust his voice.

Or what might come out.

Ever since he got back... man, it was too different. He hadn't... hadn't keep himself together. Hadn't figured out how to come back and go back to normal - to the Dean who was a hunter, a hero who killed monsters and saved people, the Dean who was Sammy's big brother, someone who could look after him and keep him from going down dark roads - not after Hell. After Alastair. It felt like some fucked-up fever dream of a life he'd already started forgetting down there. Most days, he woke up thinking he was still in Hell. That was, if he'd gone to sleep the night before at all.

He felt fractured. Confused. Crazy. Like if he was trying to hold on to so many different broken pieces of Dean Winchester, and if he let go for a second, it would all fall down and he would never be able to find them all again.

He had tried to forget Hell - God help him, he'd tried. But he couldn't. That was the thing about Hell. It never lets you go.

Ever.

Alastair laughed suddenly and Dean focused on the table in front of him, trying to catalog (try the holy water again that Cass had blessed? _Sure, put it in that little syringe and shoot it straight up his dick, see how he likes it,_ and Dean rejected the thought immediately, rejected it immediately even though it spoke to the anger in him because he wasn't fucking touching Alastair like that), trying to focus (trying to find the switch that turned on the freaking autopilot). "Dean... you're not _still_ scared, are you? It's been _hours_ since we got started. I thought you'd shaken it off by now, gotten back in the swing of things."

 _He's right._ Dean had taken a hammer to his fingers and hands and smashed them bent and broken. Cut pieces off of them. Made it so that Alastair wouldn't be able to hold any instruments of torture again, not in that meat suit. (Dean hadn't been thinking of the person in there, not then. He had tried to, in the beginning, so they might able to save him after and the man could try to scrape together some sort of normal life - but after awhile he just... forgot it wasn't just Alastair. He didn't even know the man's name. Didn't matter now.)

Even then, Dean didn't like standing too close for too long, especially not with Alastair's eyes always on him. He was safe, Cass had assured him of that a million times before he went in, Alastair wasn't getting loose, but. Well. Dean just didn't like it.

"Oh, believe me, I'm far from scared. Kinda hard to be afraid of a guy who can't even move," Dean said brusquely, feeling a sick tug-of-war in his guts between relief he'd finally said _something_ and dread that Alastair would find some way to use it against him. "Don't mind me, I'm just figuring out the best way to tear you apart."

"Mm, too bad you're not coming up with any ideas to show it," Alastair drawled. "I'm trying to help, but you keep hiding all the way over by that table. You only come over when you got a new toy to show me. Makes me feel like you don't like spending time with me. That's not true, is it, Dean?"

"Nah. Not this time around." Dean looked over at him. Tried for a smile to match Alastair's, and found that he failed in the face of that familiar, leering, bloodied grin. He'd made a career out of slapping on fake smiles as the situation demanded, but here in the darkness with Alastair again, he couldn't remember how. He wished he could find some way to make Alastair feel what he had left inside Dean.

He had this, this idea that if he could - if he managed to break Alastair the way Alastair had broken him - then he wouldn't feel them anymore. He would be beyond all that. He would have finally beaten Alastair at his own game, the way he was supposed to in the first place. It would be like making things right. It would be like fixing everything he'd done wrong in Hell, everything about himself he had betrayed and forsaken, all the tears and blood.

Alastair smiled. Then he cocked his head, listening.

"What, you hear an ice cream truck?" Dean asked. "If you're a good little demon and tell me who's killing the angels, maybe I'll go get you something."

"Pass," Alastair sighed. "That girl's here, the fallen angel. I was _so_ looking forward to carving her. She's with one of the others, that's... Hmm." Alastair grinned again. A particularly nasty grin Dean knew well. "That's interesting. I wonder, do the _others_ know he's talking with her?"

"Yup," Dean lied, despite his surprise at hearing the news. He didn't know if Alastair could do anything with that piece of information to hurt Cass or Anna if he got it to Uriel, and he didn't know if Anna really was back in Heaven's good graces or working with Cass, but he didn't care to take any chances. Better to make him think it didn't mean shit. "Guess you're behind. She's back with them for months. They're all working together now."

"Is that right? That's nice to hear." Alastair smiled indulgently at Dean's lies. "So very... merciful and forgiving, those angels. I'll be sure to spread the good news."

"That's assuming you'll get out of this place."

"You think I won't?"

With that thought, Dean found that he _could_ smile again. It lived only a second on his lips, but it was enough. "I wouldn't bet on it if I were you."

"We'll see." Now that he was looking at Alastair again, it was hard to tear his eyes from _his_. He hated it, yet there was something in them that made it hard to look away. Like hypnosis. (Snakes.) Like if he looked away again, Alastair _would_ get free.

"Dean," Alastair said, very gently, "I heard something about you and that girl. I... do hope, for your sake, it isn't true. If it is, you _know_ what I'll have to do with you."

Dean remembered that night with Anna, being kissed and held despite she knew what he'd done, told him it wasn't his fault, that he should forgive himself, and Dean hated that he couldn't look away from Alastair's staring white eyes with those thoughts in his head, like he was spoiling everything good about what he and Anna had had together, betraying Anna by remembering it all now in this God-forsaken warehouse with means of torture lovingly laid out in front of him and blood on his hands and Alastair staring, staring from the rack -

Dean didn't say anything. He found the demon knife again, and he went to Alastair with bits of Alastair's intestines squelching and popping under his boots, and he put the knife through Alastair's staring eye, and he _twisted_ and _twisted_ and _twisted_ it away. And then he did it to the other one.

Alastair's eyes were dark bleeding holes. Dean should've been glad that he couldn't watch him anymore. But as he went back to the table to grab the holy water, Alastair turned and watched and Dean felt his eyes on him still, knowing and mocking, the terror of being an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun.

"Making progress," Alastair said, and a smile twitched at Dean's lips.


End file.
